Method and apparatus for using a single multi-function adapter with different operating systems

Active Publication Date: 2007-09-27
TAHOE RES LTD
View PDF82 Cites 80 Cited by
  • Summary
  • Abstract
  • Description
  • Claims
  • Application Information

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0010] In a design according to the present invention, a flexible arrangement allows a single arrangement of ECA hardware functions to appear as needed to conform with various operating system deployment models. A PCI interface presents a logical model appropriate to the relevant operating system. Mapping parameters and values are associated with the packet streams to allow the packet stre

Problems solved by technology

Further, the three adaptors take up physical space in a particular server, thus limiting the density of available servers in a high processor count environment.
This increases cost and complexity of the servers themselves.
While this type of design fits nicely into the PnP environment, it exposes issues related to shared resources between the PCI functions.
However, the software associated with the consolidated driver model has implicit inefficiencies due to the layers involved in virtualizing each I/O Serv

Method used

the structure of the environmentally friendly knitted fabric provided by the present invention; figure 2 Flow chart of the yarn wrapping machine for environmentally friendly knitted fabrics and storage devices; image 3 Is the parameter map of the yarn covering machine
View more

Image

Smart Image Click on the blue labels to locate them in the text.
Viewing Examples
Smart Image
  • Method and apparatus for using a single multi-function adapter with different operating systems
  • Method and apparatus for using a single multi-function adapter with different operating systems
  • Method and apparatus for using a single multi-function adapter with different operating systems

Examples

Experimental program
Comparison scheme
Effect test

Embodiment Construction

[0019] In the preferred embodiment as shown in FIG. 3, three servers 300 are connected to an Ethernet fabric 310. Preferably this is a higher performance Ethernet fabric 310 than the Ethernet fabric 108 as it is also used for storage area networking and clustering capabilities. As can be seen, there is logically only a single link to a single fabric in the system according to the preferred embodiment, though this may be any number of actual physical links. Storage units 306 are also directly connected to the Ethernet fabric 310. Further, a conventional user 110 is connected to the Ethernet fabric 310. Because only a single fabric 310 is utilized in the designs according to the preferred embodiment, significantly less maintenance and management is required than as in the prior art as shown in FIG. 1. To handle the three varying tasks, clustering, storage and user interface, the server 300 includes an Ethernet channel adapter (ECA) 400 (FIG. 4). This ECA 400 includes builtin capabilit...

the structure of the environmentally friendly knitted fabric provided by the present invention; figure 2 Flow chart of the yarn wrapping machine for environmentally friendly knitted fabrics and storage devices; image 3 Is the parameter map of the yarn covering machine
Login to view more

PUM

No PUM Login to view more

Abstract

A flexible arrangement allows a single arrangement of Ethernet channel adapter (ECA) hardware functions to appear as needed to conform to various operating system deployment models. A PCI interface presents a logical model of virtual devices appropriate to the relevant operating system. Mapping parameters and values are associated with the packet streams to allow the packet streams to be properly processed according to the presented logical model and needed operations. Mapping occurs at both the host side and at the network side to allow the multiple operations of the ECA to be performed while still allowing proper delivery at each interface.

Description

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0001] 1. Field of the Invention [0002] 2. Description of the Related Art [0003] In complex computer systems, particularly those in large transaction processing environments as shown in FIG. 1, the available servers 100 are often clustered together to improve overall system performance. Second, these clustered servers 100 are then connected by a storage area network (SAN) to storage units 106, so that all have high performance access to storage. Further, the servers 100 are also connected to an Ethernet network to allow the various user computers 110 to interact with the servers 100. Thus, the servers 100 use a first fabric 102 for clustering, a second fabric 104 for the SAN and a third fabric 108 to communicate with the users. In normal use the cluster fabric 102 is one such as InfiniBand, the SAN fabric 104 is one such as Fibre Channel and the user fabric 108 is one such as Ethernet. Therefore, in this configuration each of the servers 100 must have thr...

Claims

the structure of the environmentally friendly knitted fabric provided by the present invention; figure 2 Flow chart of the yarn wrapping machine for environmentally friendly knitted fabrics and storage devices; image 3 Is the parameter map of the yarn covering machine
Login to view more

Application Information

Patent Timeline
no application Login to view more
IPC IPC(8): G06F13/38
CPCG06F13/385
Inventor SHARP, ROBERT O.KEELS, KENNETH G.HAUSAUER, BRIAN S.LACOMBE, JOHN S.
Owner TAHOE RES LTD
Who we serve
  • R&D Engineer
  • R&D Manager
  • IP Professional
Why Eureka
  • Industry Leading Data Capabilities
  • Powerful AI technology
  • Patent DNA Extraction
Social media
Try Eureka
PatSnap group products

Browse by: Latest US Patents, China's latest patents, Technical Efficacy Thesaurus, Application Domain, Technology Topic.

© 2024 PatSnap. All rights reserved.Legal|Privacy policy|Modern Slavery Act Transparency Statement|Sitemap